Thousands of Syrians have staged protests across different cities against US President Donald Trump’s formal recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, a move that has sparked global concern and a call for “resistance” from Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Men and women carrying Syrian and Palestinian flags and banners reading “Golan is Syrian” marched through the southern city of Sweida in Syria on Tuesday, according to state-run SANA news agency, as Imad Sara, the country’s information minister, called for a “strong response” and at a rally in Damascus.

Protests also took place in southern Deraa, about 20 kilometres from the Golan Heights, and in northern Aleppo, as well as Homs and Hama in the country’s centre.

“We are here to condemn Trump’s Golan decision,” said Mohammad Shaaban, a protester in Aleppo. “The Golan is Arab and Syrian whether they like it or not.”

Trump’s move on Monday made the US the first country to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan, which was captured from Syria in a 1967 war and regarded by the rest of the international community as occupied territory.

Syria has called the move “blatant aggression”.

Amid growing condemnation, including from a number of US’s European allies, the leader of Hezbollah said the decision proves “resistance, resistance, and resistance” was the only way to retake lands occupied by Israel. 

In a televised speech on Tuesday, Hassan Nasrallah described Trump’s move as “a crucial turning point in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict”, which “deals a knockout punch” to peace in the region.

Syrians protest in the northern city of Aleppo against the US decision to recognise Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights [George Ourfalian/ AFP]

Hezbollah, the only side not to have disarmed after Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war, is credited with expelling Israel from the south of the country in 2000.

The group is a key backer of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, where its fighters have helped Damascus gain ground against rebels and other armed groups during the country’s eight-year civil war.

Nasrallah said it was the muted response of Arab countries to Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel last year that had encouraged a similar declaration on the Golan.

“Therefore we must expect, and I tell that to the Arab and Muslim people and in particular our Palestinian brothers, we should expect that after a while Trump comes out and says he is supportive of the Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank too,” he warned.

Meanwhile, ambassadors from the five EU members of the UN Security Council – France, Germany, Britain, Poland and Belgium – issued a joint statement saying that they do not recognise Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

“Annexation of territory by force is prohibited under international law,” and any unilateral border changes go against “the rules-based international order and the UN Charter,” they said.

“We raise our strong concerns about broader consequences of recognizing illegal annexation and also about the broader regional consequences,” they said.

All five countries are close US allies.

Trump’s Golan decision has also sparked condemnation from the Arab League, as well as several regional states, including Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Washington, DC – The Trump administration’s decision to further expand the so-called global gag rule that bans foreign aid to groups providing or promoting abortion will “undermine the health and human rights of women and girls globally”, rights groups said on Tuesday.

The rule is “sending a very clear signal to the rest of the world that the US is comfortable turning its back on the human rights of women and girls around the world”, Veronika Cernadas, a spokeswoman for the Center for Reproductive Rights told Al Jazeera.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Tuesday that the US was furthering its expansion of the global gag rule by cracking down on NGOs that provide funding to other groups that provide or promote abortions.

“We will refuse to provide assistance to foreign NGOs that give financial support to other foreign groups in the global abortion industry,” Pompeo told reporters.

He added that “this administration has shown that we can continue to meet our critical global health goals, including providing healthcare for women, while refusing to subsidise the killing of unborn babies.”

The Reagan-era policy, also known as the Mexico City policy, bans international organisations that receive US funding from providing abortion services or offering information about the procedure. The rule has traditionally been rescinded or rolled back by Democratic presidents and reinstated by Republican leaders.

The administration of US President Donald Trump reinstated the rule after taking office and expanded it to include funding coming from the US Department of State, USAID and Department of Defense. 

According to health groups, the rule now targets the entire US global health assistance portfolio, which includes more than $9bn in global health assistance funding.

Due to the cuts and expansion of the rule, “you lose the most effective providers for comprehensive services in countries where it is so important to have US foreign assistance form women’s access to those services”, said Elisha Dunn-Georgiou, the vice president of programmes at PAI, a global organisation working to advance reproductive health.

“What we see is that particularly rural women, marginalised populations, young people, really the most vulnerable populations are the ones that are the most hit by this policy,” she told Al Jazeera.

‘Disregard women’s rights’

According to rights groups the expansion of the rule means that NGOs providing services to prevent and treat malaria, HIV and other infections diseases have been greatly affected. 

They also argue that limiting funding to organisations that provide access to family planning, including abortion, will force more women and young girls to make the decision to have unsafe abortions. 

Pompeo also said that expansion of the rule means that the US will cut funding to the Organisation of American States (OAS).

“The institutions of OAS should be focused on addressing crises in Cuba, Nicaragua and in Venezuela, not advancing the pro-abortion cause,” he said.

Rights groups have accused the Trump administration of waging a war against women’s rights and reproductive health by reinstating the global gag rule, appointing anti-abortion rights activists to key posts in federal departments dealing with women’s heath and seeking to cut Title X funding to health providers that perform abortions or make abortion referrals. 

“The approach overall is to punish women and disregard women’s rights,” Dunn-Georgiou said. “There is no attempt at all to provide comprehensive reproductive health services to women and to give women option to live their healthiest lives”.

The United Nations has sent a team of investigators to Mali‘s restive Mopti region, where more than 150 people were killed this weekend, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday. 

The raid took place on Saturday in the village of Ogossagou, home to the Fulani herding community, near the town of Mopti in central Mali.

Local officials and security sources told AFP news agency that the death toll had climbed to 160, while the UN rights office said at least 153 people were killed and 73 were wounded.

The “horrific attacks” marked a “significant” surge in “violence across communal lines and by so-called ‘self-defence groups’ apparently attempting to root out violent extremist groups”, said Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN rights office. 

In the Mopti region alone, attacks had led to “some 600 deaths of women, children and men, as well as thousands of displaced persons” since March 2018, she told reporters.

More than a third of those killed had died since the beginning of 2019, she added.

The UN has sent a team of 10 human rights officers, a child protection officer and two crime scene investigators to the Mopti region to investigate Saturday’s attack, Shamdasani said.

“We are in direct contact with the authorities,” she said adding that the UN had offered to help to “bring the perpetrators to justice in order to break the circle of impunity”.

An armed group from within the Dogon ethnic group – a hunting and farming community with a long history of tension with the Fulani over access to land – is suspected of having carried out Saturday’s raid. 

On Sunday, the Malian government announced the dissolution of one Dogon militia.

Shamdasani said that “on many occasions, the attacks are said to be motivated by a desire to root out individuals linked to violent extremist groups”.

‘Deliberately targeted’

Raids remain a persistent threat, and in the ethnic mosaic of the centre of the country, the attacks have taken a bloody toll on groups with a history of rivalry.

The Fulani, who are mainly Muslim, have been accused of supporting a violent preacher, Amadou Koufa, who rose to prominence in central Mali four years ago.

So-called “self-defence groups” have emerged in the Dogon community with the declared aim of providing protection against Fulani armed groups.

“There is this development of stigmatisation … They are deliberately targeted,” Shamdasani said.

Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, Mali’s president, vowed on Monday to beef up security during a visit to the area. “Justice will be done,” he vowed. 

Amadou Diallo, a local councillor who denounced the attack as “ethnic cleansing”, told AFP the death toll had jumped to 160 and “will probably be higher still”. 

An AFP reporter on Monday said many homes in the village had been burned down and the ground was littered with corpses.

“I have never seen anything like that. They came, they shot people, burned homes, killed the babies,” said 75-year-old survivor Ali Diallo.

Saturday’s attack was the deadliest in Mali since the 2013 French-led military intervention that drove back armed groups who had taken control of the north of the country.

“The state is no longer there; there is no state protection to ensure safety and its presence in those areas,” Adama Gaye, West African analyst and former director of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) regional bloc, told Al Jazeera, warning that attacks on the Fulani had become a recurrent problem which needed to be addressed by the Mali government and at the regional level.

“People have concluded that there is even a risk of genocide – they are using the word genocide regarding the Fulanis … it’s a very serious situation.”

Christophe Boulierac, a spokesman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, told reporters in Geneva that around one-third of those killed were children, and that 31 children were also injured.

“This tragic killing and maiming of defenceless children is on an unprecedented scale,” he said.

A soldier walking among rubble of a house destroyed during an attack on March 23, on the village of Ogassogou, near Mopti, where 160 Fulani people, including women and children, were killed [Malian Presidency/Handout via AFP]